Chester E. Finn Jr., a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, and coauthor Jessica A. Hockett, an education consultant specializing in differentiated instruction, curriculum design, and lesson study, collaborated to produce Exam Schools: Inside America’s Most Selective Public High Schools, which is due out in October 2012. In the book the authors examine how academically selective public high schools work and what is their important role in teaching the country’s brightest students. Exam Schools is a Koret Task Force on K–12 Education study.

The August issue of Kirkus Reviews wrote (in part) the following about Exam Schools: “A cogent exploration of the struggle to balance equity and excellence in America's most academically selective public high schools. . . . A fact-driven, clear text that will be of interest to educators as well as parents of students at selective public high schools.”;

Click here to view a webcast of Exam Schools: The Ups and Downs of Selective Public High Schools.

A recent report identifies 165 public high schools that admit students based on top academic records. These high schools are sometimes known as “exam schools” in reference to their selective admissions criteria, which can include entrance exams. Researchers Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Jessica Hockett explored these institutions, asking if their “whole school” focus on high achievers might play a larger role in educating top students in a national climate “consumed with gap closing.” Their analysis, “Exam Schools from the Inside,” appears in the Fall issue of Education Next.

Vitaly Katayev witnessed the dawn of the age of nuclear-armed missiles as a designer. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he became deeply involved in government oversight of arms development and, later, disarmament.

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